Spend even a little time reading up on social justice, and you’ll notice that some people do some pretty awful things. You’ll also notice that often, these people try to cover up the awful things they’ve done. People want a reputation of being honest and good, even if they don’t want to actually deserve such a reputation.

This is a plea to you to pay attention. As advocates of non-awfulness, we can take advantage of the human desire to, if not be decent, at least seem to be decent. We can bear witness, let the sunlight shine on the actions of those who’d prefer to hide how corrupt or oppressive they are. The events surrounding Wendy Davis’s filibuster are a perfect illustration not just of how this works, but of how social media are making it easier to let the sunlight in than ever before.

Late Tuesday night, the entire internet (or at least about 150,000 of us) watched Texas State Senator Wendy Davis as she drew toward the end of an attempted 13 hour filibuster to defeat an abortion bill that would effectively shut down almost every abortion clinic in the state.

Wendy Davis, the LeBron James of filibustering

Like so many of us glued to our computer screens, I watched the Texas Tribune‘s livestream from the senate chambers, followed their livetweeting of events, and read and tweeted (from the DDP twitter account). The drama had me on the edge of my seat, and you really should read a recap that captures the emotional rollercoaster. This is a good, short one– go learn the details or relive the excitement now.